Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a new aquarium and one very unhappy fish. My 14 gal tank sat for a week without fish and then I added three fancy guppies 5 days ago. I had of course previously dechlorinated the water and I had the filter and heater running. I checked the ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite levels often, but actually the levels never went above zero. This surprised me, because I was expecting the ammonia levels to go way up, but they never did. Yesterday I looked at the tank and there was a drastic change. The water was a little foggy and my male guppy was at the bottom of the tank breathing extremely fast. He will swim around, but he usually lies at the bottom of the tank, breathing quickly and moving his fins around. At least he's upright. The females stay close to the top of the tank. They don't seem that happy either, but they're not as bad. I changed a third of the water last night and there isn't much change. What can I do?

Your tank is cycling... you'll have to wait the process out. Meanwhile, only water changes can help. Yes there are chemicals out there, but these only hide the problem, and can actually mess the cycling process up thus taking it longer to be completed. Below is a link on cycling, it should answer all your questions you might have, but if it doesn't you can just ask me. I'm here to help. You may want to consider adding bacterial additives such as bio spira or cycle, whichever you can find in your local pet store. Follow the directions on the package, and things should speed up a little bit. Guppies were probably not the best choice with a newly set up tank, so you might lose a couple or all of them. If you lose all of them, I would go with a rasbora of some sort because they are more hardy than guppies. You could also do a fishless cycling (well not now as you have fish- but if they die you can let me know and I'll get you the information you need).
New Tank Setup

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Phishie

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."